If you upgrade Windows XP to Vista and have the Microsoft VM selected in
Internet Explorer 7 and the Sun JVM also installed, you arrive in Vista
with the Microsoft VM nonfunctional. If you try to enable the Sun JVM
from the Control Panel, Vista doesn't let you do so. However, after
uninstalling and reinstalling Sun Java it is set as the default in IE7.
Then, one can un-select Sun Java and the Microsoft VM works a bit. It
will run some simple applets but hangs on some simple applets such as
the one at www.segal.org/java/just_checkbox/ and on all signed applets I
tested.

I haven't tried re-installing the Microsoft VM. If this works, it would
be useful to know, since we still have lots of users of our applets who
are running the Microsoft VM and it would be good to be able to test
that environment without finding an XP computer.

Yep, many of those poor developers do not realize
what kind of a battlefield they are participating in.

Microsoft and Sun will fight this battle
on the highest level there is, going up to the level
of Supreme Court, needs be, shelling out gigabux
on lawyers alone.

Because this is the battle for the corporate world
information systems, which is a pretty, pretty fat field
in itself.

So, with just about every single step you have to make
as a developer, you'd be walking on a mine field,
LITERALLY.

And who do you think is going to win this battle?
Any bets?

I can just tell you one thing, by the time their
new "deal" expires, there will be a total devastation,
and, for all practical purpuses, there will be only
one player left in the field, and who do you think
it might be?

Sun?

Anyone wants to bet on it?

In a year or so, what is left of those very concepts
Java is built upon, will be nothing but a laughing stock.

You know why?

Because Microsoft will continue developing their own
version of Java and the ace in their pocket is, first
of all, they control vast majority of the world
software business and operating systems. They have
developed technologies in other languages, operating
systems and development environments that are far
superior to that what Sun has to offer with all its
limited impact on what is happening in the software field.

I can bet you that within a year or two,
you won't even need to bother about all this JVM
stuff cause it'll all be wired into all sorts of
MS architectures and people wouldn't even have
to bother about dowloading some JVM bloatware,
code named "the latest version forever".

They will be able to just double click on an app,
and run it, without even bothering about all this
JVM fat. Because that is what people are used to
and that is what they want. They don't need all
this added complexity for no reason at all.

Just about everything that JVM does or java is
capable of, is ALREADY available in the ms
equivalent.

So...

In order for Sun to win that deadly battle,
they'd have to buy out the Microsoft itself
and utilize their existing technology, going
back generations in time.

Just take the simpliest thing imaginable,
laying out your GUI with your gui designer.

I can design the entire gui system with about
10 different frames in hours, and with the
modern Java tools, I have to sit and think
about gridbag contraints, that behave in violation
of the simpliest logical principles:
when you increase some coefficient or constraint,
the result should be a bigger something.

When you lay out your gui elements,
you don't think in terms of "fills" or paddings.
You think in terms of how it looks.
And you don't think about rendering on different
platforms, screen resolution and font sizes.

Doing gui work on just about the best tools there are,
at least according to those raving reviews, calling
them the LEADING something in Java field,
is like writing a modern, fully distributed app,
using your hex calculator.

I designed a number of gui screens with MS forms.
A piece o cake affair. Grid snaps, drag and drop,
immediate resizing, any font you like, repositioning
components and not even worrying about what kind
of layout gadget is best suited for you job.

And with java?
Well, you have the whole layout business going
as a result. They can not even generate the code
setting those constraints properly so that their
own design time version reconciles with RUN time
version of the same thing, under the same environment.

Not only that, but just by dragging things in the
"wrong" direction, which they allow you to do,
you, all of a sudden may start getting the error
messages "incorrect constraint set, please look
at your source code" or things like that.

What?

But WHO have set it?
It is YOU, mr. java gui design code developers
and assorted architects of they very underlying
machinery.

How come you even allowed me to drag things to
the places that you consider illegal?

Why did you ACCEPT my dragging
and then issue the error message in some other
window, i may not even have noticed with all the
clutter on your main screen?

All of a sudden, a perfectly valid gui element
is not selectable any more and it is not clear why.
But others are.
If you have a real life nested layout,
and change one of the elements in one nested layout,
all of a sudden, other layouts start producing you
all sorts of errors, and they worked just fine
just a moment ago.

What kind of "progress" do you expect to achive
with all this superjazz,
and how many light years is it going to take you
to get there?

What a petty affair in modern age.

Why bother worrying about non-standard stuff? It would probably be
easier to just test for the Microsoft JVM in your applet at the start, and
then tell the users that they need to update Java and direct them to
useful informational web pages like these (because Sun keeps changing the
URI for the download pages; I've had many bookmarks go bad on me because
of this):

Relevant Pages

Re: Allowable global declaration in C... He is now working at Microsoft... Jim Gosling, inventor of Java, left the company in disgust. ...Apple has to maintain their ... subterfuges, not the least of which was Sun backing down, and Sun opening up the "Java ...(microsoft.public.vc.mfc)

Re: Allowable global declaration in C... He is now working at Microsoft... Jim Gosling, inventor of Java, left the company in disgust. ... subterfuges, not the least of which was Sun backing down, and Sun opening up the "Java ... I have, in my day, dealt with IBM, Digital Equipment, Apple, Sun and Microsoft. ...(microsoft.public.vc.mfc)

Re: Allowable global declaration in C... He is now working at Microsoft... Jim Gosling, inventor of Java, left the company in disgust. ...Apple has to maintain their ... subterfuges, not the least of which was Sun backing down, and Sun opening up the "Java ...(microsoft.public.vc.mfc)

Re: Are identifier names case sensitive?... This is one reason why I moved away from writing components for distribution; the install size was embarrassing... ... I'd be curious, given say something like String2Num, written in COBOL and a comparative copy written entirely in Java, what would be the physical size of the respective packages - done in F/J or M/F you have to have the accompanying runtime etc.; presumably something similar even with Java. ... The JVM is a subset of the JRE, and it's the piece of software that actually runs your Java programs. ... Sun includes a JVM with the JRE, but Microsoft at one point had developped their own JVM, and distributed it with Windows. ...(comp.lang.cobol)

Re: OT : Making money from Java... > If Java is FREE can somebody explain how Sun Microsystems makes its ...Sun Java is distributed free of charge, but is not free in the second ... there is Java the language and Java Virtual Machine (JVM).... Note that Sun retains much control over Java (they had exclusive control, ...(comp.lang.cobol)